CREWS CONTROL

Exclusive interview with OFA president Bette Jean Crews

You’ve farmed most of your life? I found my farmer in high school and have farmed since I married him in 1970. I was raised in town. My dad was a barber. He was self-employed so a lot of the similarities are there as far as work ethic, time commitment.

What kind of farming did you marry into? My husband’s family farm was 600 acres, predominately horticulture — vegetables, strawberries, but our main income came from the apple orchard.  His father farmed in the days when you could raise a family on 100 acres of orchard. It was expanded into grains and we also dabbled in feedlot. I manage a small buyer’s group for orchard chemicals; and in the past we sold small farm equipment and irrigation systems.

What best management decision have you made on your farm? Diversification. The first time we expanded was when we went into the juice brokerage business. We needed to get rid of the cull apples, the juice apples, and could not get anyone to move them for us.  The one broker in the area couldn’t get more access to the juice plant and so we brokered a deal on our own to move our own apples and got access to the plant. That was in the mid 70s and then neighbours started saying, ‘can you help me out too.’ We had bought a fairly inexpensive truck with a roll-off unit and 25 cu.yd. bins.    You know farmers can fix anything, so my husband was the mechanic and the driver and even with small children at home I could manage the business from the house and dispatch using two-way radios.  We built that business up until eventually we ran two trucks with each of us driving and helped 30 farmers in a 50 mile radius move 5,000 tonnes of juice apples in a three-month period. 

What was the worst farm management decision you made? I don’t think we took enough risks. The good news is that when the ’80s came, we were not highly mortgaged. We had pinched every penny in the ’70s and had finally paid off the Farm Credit loan. But my good heavens we raised almost everything that we ate. I gardened; canned; raised our own chickens; I made clothes for the children. We lived like pioneers. Because we had no debt by the time the high interest rates came we weren’t hit as hard as some others. That was a good decision but in hindsight I remember an opportunity to buy another farm that we missed and I will always look at that and wish we’d bought it.
 
Did you have any worries about marrying a farmer, when that often means marrying his job? I didn’t know that I was marrying the farm too. Did I have adjustments? Yes. When I grew up, every Sunday my family went to the beach or on a picnic or did something . You can’t do that when you are farming because it might rain on Monday. I soon learned to pack up all the children and with the picnic go to the Brighton farm and watch their dad work the field.

 What do you like best about farming? I like the freedom to make my own decisions.

A Farmers Forum survey a few years ago found that the job farmers disliked most was picking rocks. What farm job do you dislike the most? Our oldest one was five years old when the fourth one was born.  Because the children were so close in age, they moved through our lives with us as a unit. When I was out in the field, the children were out in the field with me, so it was fun. They would pick up little rocks and I would be picking up big ones. I remember picking corn with Charles and he said, ‘I just hate this job." But by the end of the row we were both laughing so hard. The kids made it fun. Nobody will believe this stuff  but I really enjoyed all of it.

What is the best book you’ve read in the past five years? Sun Tzu, a translation of the collective wisdom of military leaders in North China 2,300 years ago. Sun Tzu was a Chinese emperor writing about the art of war.  There is a lot of wisdom there and a lot about relationships and negotiations. It is calming to read.

Who is your favourite author?
Isaac Azimov, scientist and science fiction writer who first coined the word "robotics."

 What is your favourite movie?
I’m almost embarrased to say, I really like "Men in Black". It’s just foolish but I watch it when I need to laugh.

 How far away do you live from Ontario Minister of Agriculture Leona Dombrowsky’s house? Ten or 15 miles. But I don’t visit her in her riding. When I see the minister it’s in Toronto or at another function.

So, there’s no practical advantage of living so close? Yes, quite often when I do a local farm tour, the Minister of Agriculture is on the bus or at the meeting. So I do bump into her that way.

You’re juggling a lot of things. What is your key to time management? I’m just lucky enough to be able to multitask.  And I’m very good at negotiations; whether it’s negotiating for the price of juice apples or negotiating a deal between two people, even if it’s between two children.  If people can work together you can get a lot more done.

What is the biggest priority for OFA in 2009? It all comes down to the profitability of all farmers.  

If there is one practical thing you could accomplish by the end of 2009 what would it be? We are being very proactive on the environmental goods and services file: from stewardship initiatives to carbon credits. The time is now for establishing dollar values for carbon credits nationally. I’m not the expert on the science but I do know farmers have an opportunity here to get some benefit for what they are providing. If we can put some value on carbon credits, if we can get some compensation to farmers for the ecological goods and services that they are doing now, and continuously increase the scope of what we do and the accompanying compensation, then we will have some baseline, at least for a time, until the next step of innovation comes along.

Anything else? The whole compensation issue under Source Water Protection legislation. Under this legislation we are going to have to actually take acres out of production and there is no compensation to the farmer for that. I can tell you if that piece of property belonged to an urbanite and it was his cottage property he would not be too happy with loosing access to a portion of land that cut off his access to the beach without some kind of compensation.

An argument has often been made that the OFA is too political, that it is tight with the Liberal Party. At the national level, Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Bob Friesen ran as a Liberal candidate in Manitoba in the last election. Any truth to these observations at the provincial level?

Were you or are you a member of a party? No. I was at the point in my life where I might have gotten more active with a political party, but once I was involved with OFA I realized how dangerous that might be to my credibility as a lobbiest. I have very good relationships with three major parties in my own area, I have friends that are in the Liberal and Conservative parties and worked with each party through them, and I don’t think any of them see me as closely linked to one or another. As far as it goes nationally with Bob Friesen, I think that’s a shame because CFA is not Liberal any more than it is Conservative.

What can farmers be most proud of? Their ability to innovate and adapt. We are some of the most efficient people in the world.

Where do farmers need to do more? I’m not saying this is the farmer’s fault. There are opportunities with government programs that farmers are not making the best use of because the programs are complicated. We need more farmers saying to government that a certain program in concept is a heck of a good idea but I can’t access it because the process is so complicated and I don’t know if at the end of all of this paper work, I will actually get the benefit of that program or if someone will say I don’t qualify.

Who is Bette-Jean Crews?
An optimist.